SC Spotlight: Dr. Heather Berg’s Gender Studies Classes and Research on Sex Work Advocacy
By: Sumaya Hussaini ‘22
The Gender Studies Department at USC is an interdisciplinary program that offers an intellectual environment, sense of community, and dynamic course load. The classes emphasize the importance of realizing the intersections gender has with other relations of power including race, ethnicity, sexuality, class, and religion.
In honor of Women’s History Month, I wanted to recognize a professor in the Gender Studies Department who has inspired me and taught me so much in less than a year of being at USC. As gender studies minor, I’ve had the privilege of taking classes offered by Dr. Heather Berg, a professor and activist who does research that explores how workers navigate and resist capitalism and gendered oppression. She has a Ph.D. in Feminist Studies and teaches classes about feminist theory, gender and social justice, gender and creative labor, and my personal favorite, unruly women.
As a supportive, engaging, and highly intellectual professor, my favorite thing about her classes is that she wants her students to make a difference in the world and is extremely passionate about challenging structures of gendered oppression, wealth inequality, and racism. I walk away from class every week with my mind blown, having gone in depth about concepts I had never thought about, helping me develop critical thinking skills and motivating me to become an activist in my everyday life.
Dr. Berg explains how she was motivated to pursue a career in feminist studies because she wanted a job that she was passionate about and loved. “A lot of the adults I knew hated waking up in the morning and going to work, but I always knew that the teachers in my life were the only adults who didn’t hate their jobs. It was really important to me to construct a life that avoided that, so I knew I wanted to become a teacher.”
The general premise of Dr. Berg’s classes is that gender studies can teach us how to build a better world. “I’m excited to get students thinking about how they can apply that to their own lives.” She said.
Dr. Berg had always been interested in social justice while growing up, but she became really invigorated with the stresses of capitalism and having to pay rent when she started working. As a former cocktail waitress working in a feminized profession, having to deal with gender and wealth inequality in an intimate way taught her a lot about gender and work, and it made her passionate about working more towards this cause.
Her job as a cocktail waitress only marked the beginning of her interest in fighting for gender and social justice, however. “In college, I joined with labor organizing including for sex workers rights and reproductive justice, which turned me in the direction of a lot of related movements like anti-police violence, housing justice, and healthcare access.” She said.
Aside from being a professor at USC, Dr. Berg is involved in advocacy for sex work and supporting movements to change the negative discourse surrounding women who work in the porn industry. As a white woman, she recognizes her racial privilege and wants to use her voice to make a difference and support workers who are involved in vibrant movements. “Sex workers already have really advanced policy platforms that they’re advocating for and sometimes they need someone who can provide the research to support their claims. Unfortunately, policymakers are more likely to listen to a woman with a Ph.D., so it’s often helpful to put myself in the room to help with that.” She explains.
Personally, I know that a lot of people — including feminists and liberals — view sex work and porn as being oppressive towards women. Before taking Dr. Berg’s class, I was extremely uneducated on the subject matter and didn’t take into consideration the fact that regulations on these industries actually make sex workers less safe, which is extremely counterproductive. When asked what the most important thing that feminists should keep in mind when advocating for certain regulations on the porn industry or sex work, Dr. Berg’s response was simple: ask them.
“The first thing to do when dealing with a policy that targets any marginalized population is to ask people who are affected by the issue what they actually want. Sex workers are the experts in their own lives and they need to be at the center of any movements. It does not help us to ignore them.” She explained.
While sex work and porn can understandably be seen as exploitative, it’s important for us to take a step back and attack the real issue at hand, which is an exploitative system of capitalism.
“I’m really concerned that feminists targeting sex work and not the systems that require women and queers to work in all sorts of ways in order to pay rent are distracting from the bigger issue. They’re making sex workers less safe by exposing them to police violence when what we should all be advocating for is living wages, affordable housing, and healthcare. These really basic questions get covered over when we distract ourselves with the way that people choose to make a living.” She said.
There are a few different ways that Dr. Berg believes students at USC who are interested in advocating for sex work and trying to change the negative discourse surrounding women who work in the porn industry can work towards making a difference.
- Listen to the workers themselves! Follow active sex workers to figure out what kind of campaigns they’re advocating for and throw your support behind that.
- Support political candidates who come out in support of decriminalization as a policy platform. There are a lot of very dangerous proposals being made at the state level that are gaining ground in a lot of ways, and there are candidates who, despite stigmatization, are openly supporting the movements of sex workers.
- If you have extra money to spare, use it towards funds that provide bail for sex workers who have been incarcerated for self-defense, funds that provide harm reduction supplies, and funds that support emergency costs for folks dealing with housing insecurity.
- Even if you don’t have extra money to spare, there’s a lot that can be done. Sign petitions and call your representatives when they support harmful legislation.
One major takeaway that resonated with me from Dr. Berg’s classes is the importance of resistance. Students can work towards resisting capitalism and systems of oppression in their everyday lives by doing things like joining a union and linking up with other people in their community to collectively fight for justice.
Dr. Berg explains an important philosophy from one of her favorite theorists, John Hollway. “We make the system every day through our own actions. There are many ways in which we can act from a place of solidarity rather than assumed scarcity. We must resist the system of racist capitalism and instead focus on ways to build our community, solidarity, to fight for our own survival and that of others in our community. Through resistance, we’re working to unmake that system.”
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